Meet Visiting Clerkship Scholarship recipient Lensa Moen

Each year, the Department of Ophthalmology awards a visiting clerkship scholarship to a fourth-year medical student. A generous donor provided the scholarship.

This past summer, the recipient was Lensa Moen, who attends the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine at Washington State University in Spokane.  

“I am honored and grateful to have been selected as the 2025 recipient of the University of Washington Ophthalmology Visiting Student Scholarship.”

Moen had the opportunity to experience the exceptional education in ophthalmology at UW, spending four weeks at Harborview Medical Center and Seattle Children’s.  

Lensa was born in Ethiopia and later emigrated to Sweden with her family. She is multilingual, speaking two Ethiopian languages and Swedish fluently in addition to English.

She came to UW for college, studying neuroscience, then completed a one-year post-baccalaureate clinical internship in medical lab science. She was a medical technologist for 10 years before entering medical school. She is married and the couple had their first child last year.

She became interested in ophthalmology first when a friend had a retinal detachment, and saw how he received immediate, vision-saving treatment for that.

She asked to be placed with an ophthalmologist for a rotation, “and I was hooked after seeing my first surgery.”

During her visiting clerkship this summer, she particularly enjoyed working with the ophthalmology physicians at Seattle Children’s.

“I marveled at their ability to determine eyeglass prescriptions for non-verbal children using retinoscopy,” Moen said.

“I am hoping to be married to ophthalmology,” she said. “I am proposing (applying to residency programs) and we’ll see if she says yes.”